A non-com­mis­sioned of­fi­cer of the U.S. Air Force was among four peo­ple killed over the week­end when a tur­bo­prop drug-hunt­ing plane lost com­mu­ni­ca­tions over the west­ern Caribbean, then crashed in north­ern Colom­bia.

Two Amer­i­can con­trac­tors and a Pana­ma Na­tion­al Guards­man were al­so killed, and two mem­bers of the Dash-8 U.S. con­tract crew were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured in the crash Sat­ur­day morn­ing near the Pana­man­ian bor­der.

The Mi­a­mi Her­ald quot­ed a U.S. Air Force of­fi­cial who said there was "no in­di­ca­tion the plane was shot down".

The plane was "con­tract­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment to pro­vide de­tec­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of drug traf­fick­ing routes in the coastal re­gion of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca," the of­fi­cial said.

The flight was over the Caribbean work­ing for the Key West-based re­gion­al head­quar­ters of U.S. an­ti-traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion called the Joint In­ter­a­gency Task Force-South, and no­ti­fied head­quar­ters that "they had lo­cat­ed a sus­pect ves­sel," ac­cord­ing to a JI­ATF spokes­woman Jody Draves.

Team mem­bers were con­tact­ing the Colom­bians to con­duct ei­ther an in­ter­dic­tion or a dis­rup­tion when com­mu­ni­ca­tions were lost.